Football Manager Pre-Season Why You Should Care

Ok, so if you are managing a super-rich club perhaps it’s not worth your time but for a club struggling for money, your pre-season could make a big difference.

If you let the game or rather your staff do all the pre-season the only thing that will happen is your players will get fit. The game does a reasonable job of getting the whole squad fit. But, if you manage the pre-season, choosing the friendly games, the training routines, and the individual training you can benefit this the following areas;

1. Higher fitness levels, which will be a benefit towards the end of the season;
2. The players you will be playing during the season can be targeted for better fitness.
3. An injection of cash into the club.
4. Better understanding of tactics for the players.
5. Better understanding of the way your tactics might need tuning before the season starts.

So let’s look at those five points in more detail;

1. In TRAINING under the option REST you can set the last two opinions to DOUBLE. This works the players hard and builds up strength, stamina, and other areas. You can combine this setting of all players’ extra training to endurance in the INDIVIDUAL option. Now, you must understand doing either of these puts players at risk of injury. But I’ve found it’s a risk worth taking. You should look out for very poor performances,  drop some of these options back to ease the stress on the players. But in general, this tactic can be used for between 4-6 games. In pre-season, I play 2 games a week.

2. Using the above keep an eye on the player training rating. Most will rate high but some won’t like this sort of training at all. If you see a very low rating these are players you can either set to normal levels or set to a specific type of individual training or none at all. One thing I like to do here is set players with good technique to CORNER or FREE KICK training. This won’t produce a No.1 dead-ball expert but might give you more options.

3. Money, all clubs need money but did you know you can work the friendly games to gain extra money? This adds to your income and gives you a better bank balance next season. For very small clubs it can make a big difference used over a few seasons. Here’s how it works;

First, you need to control who books the friendly games. You do this in the STAFF>RESONSIBILITIES>MATCH untick the option there. Now once the fixtures come out go into SCHEDULE. Once a date and use the options on the side to select the team you want to play. The way this works is when you book a friendly you either pay a fee or receive a fee or both. It would be best if you took care here. How I do it is on Saturdays I book a large club away. This brings in income from a free. On Wednesdays, I play a home game against a local team. There you pay the small club a small fee but gain all the income from the gate money. If you do this right instead of the pre-season costing your club money you should gain six to eight lumps of money. For a club with say 10,000 capacity that could bring in at least £300,000 or could be a lot higher for a championship club that could attract a premiership fee for a friendly.

4. Players need to play your tactics to get better. You should always be training in at least two tactics. My advice is not to make these too different from each other. Pre-season allows you to train a defensive tactic you might not want to use. The reason is you can book games against better teams, it’s pointless playing defensive against poorer teams it just doesn’t work in FM. So during pre-season switch it up and try to play each tactic at least 3 times. I would also advise not to switch any static to attacking simply because you are playing a poor team or to defence simply because it’s a big team. Tactics have a setting for a good reason. If the tactic is a coutous static it’s that for a reason and going to attacking could work against you big time. More on tactics in a few weeks.G

5. You should play a fair few of these pre-season games in a comprehensive setting so you can see the movement of the players. It’s okay to sign players and know the best position, but the players can catch you out and be wrong for your chosen tactic. For example, a player could have the trait of dropping back to collect the ball. This can be a striker or a midfield player. You should be able to work out that neither of these is suitable for a pressing tactic. If players are not performing the first place to look for answers is the development page to see what traits they already have. Plus it could be you might want to train them to do something that better suits the way you want to play.

Well that it for this one.